


Straight Shot

by soixantecroissants



Series: Woman [3]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Bandit Evil Queen | Regina Mills/Robin Hood, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-22
Updated: 2016-06-22
Packaged: 2018-07-16 17:16:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 755
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7276858
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soixantecroissants/pseuds/soixantecroissants
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Regina mothers the Merry Men and Robin comes home with a question.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Straight Shot

She wakes to sunlight and the itch of a scroll in place of his beard on her skin, words penned to parchment in his hasty, slanting scrawl: _Back this evening. Take care of the lads whilst I’m away?—R_

Men lift their porridge bowls in greeting when Regina joins with the line to the cast-iron pot, and some go as far as a jovial thump on her arm. Little John, puffed out in his pride and an ill-fitting apron, winkingly ladles her extra slabs of pork belly, festooning the rim with generous pops of blue and red berries. (They’d been her own, healthier contribution to their meal for the day, fortuitously foraged from a late night out when she and Robin sought safer – sweeter – pockets of forest to privately enjoy one another.)

But no number of subtle inquiries, nor some far more pointed, will budge a single one of them into spilling their leader’s whereabouts – not even John, who can, quite honestly, be a bit of a gossip at times.

It’s a regrettable setback that patience is hardly a strength of Regina’s, but still the day flies forward, despite her swelling irritation at all the men around her (and the only one who isn’t). She spends the bulk of the sunlight settling their scuffles and straightening out Will Scarlet’s poor, hopeless bow arm, then doing the same for Much the miller’s son’s nose when Will clumsily puts a sudden crook in it with a wild backswing of his elbow.

Miraculously, Will’s arrow – narrowly missing a very fortunate Friar – embeds squarely between the eyes of Robin’s wanted poster, which Regina had kindly set up for target practice.

Will crows in triumph while Much drops to the ground with a baleful glare and bloodied nose, looking rather furious that he’d chosen the exact worst moment to stroll behind them when he had.

“It’s too bad Robin will never believe you made that shot,” Regina comments dryly to Will, once she has Much decently patched up and not scowling quite so murderously.

Will looks distraught, bow falling despondently to his side. “Well if he hadn’t gone on that bloody job—” and Much promptly resumes his glowering, making sudden throat-slitting gestures.

“What job?” Regina pounces instantly, and Will cows.

“That’s not – not quite what I said, is it?” he stammers, scratching furiously at his fast-reddening neck.

“That is exactly what you said.”

“Well it’s no _ordinary_ job,” he defends, “it’s not like he’s _stealing_ it.”

“So what, then, he’s _buying_ it instead?” she almost laughs, until Will’s guilty grimace throws her into speechless bewilderment. What could possibly entice a thief to go through the trouble of actually purchasing something? “What is _it_ , Will?”

“Y’know,” he says evasively, “Robin didn’t exactly say.”

Regina resolves to box Will soundly in the ears, when Much rather opportunely resumes his howling about the pain in his nose, and she’s properly distracted again until nightfall.

She finally leaves them to their ale and their campfire stories, spent and surly as she retires to the woods, seeking some fresh space to air out the rising fumes of her anger. She’s no way of knowing which direction Robin had taken off to, and whatever tracks she might’ve recovered of his have surely been lost to the interluding winds and footfalls of long-gone woodland creatures.

She wanders, not knowing where her steps have led her until she crosses into the clearing, where they’d first looked at one another and truly understood the things that passed unsaid between them. The log they’d shared as one fire died and another ignited still sits there undisturbed, save for patches of overgrown moss. She walks to examine it now, crouching down, mentally cataloguing each of the grooves and their sprouting greenery.

The dull but firm _thwack!_ has her keeling backward in shock, mouth dangled open at the sight of an arrow’s shaft protruding from the log. A glint of gold spins and spins at the head of it, pinned there by its own momentum, until it slows to a stop and she sees the emerald at its center.

“Robin,” she gasps, and he’s already made it several paces into the clearing before she turns to gape up at his half-crooked grin. “You bought this?”

“Ah, my men are not to be trusted with secrets, I see,” sighs Robin regretfully, seating himself to press a kiss to her smile. “But I couldn’t very well ask for your hand without their permission, much less a ring I didn't pay for, now could I?”


End file.
